National Healthcare Scheme could help government save up to 30 million euros annually.
CYPRUS could achieve significant budget cuts if the government finally decided to go ahead with the long delayed introduction of a national healthcare scheme, Kyriakos Christofi, chairman of the Health Insurance Organisation said.
As overall healthcare spending in the economy rises at a rate of 7.3 per cent annually, healthcare reform could help curb its rate at 6.4 per cent, Christofi told the Sunday Mail in an interview.
“The current healthcare system cannot be sustained for much longer,” Christofi said. Christofi had submitted his resignation to President Christofias two months ago in protest over the delay in the introduction of the NHS. “The introduction is not only financially viable but would also save the Cypriot economy 625 million euros in today’s prices over the next ten years”.
If the government’s share in overall healthcare spending, estimated at 48 per cent of 1.2 billion euros a year, is maintained even after the introduction of the NHS, “it will result in yearly savings of 30 million euros to the government’s budget in today’s prices,” Christofi added.
A year ago, the European Commission encouraged the government to go ahead with an overhaul of the Cypriot healthcare system. The government however has put healthcare reform, scheduled for the second half of this year, on the back burner for the time being over fears it could prove unpopular. Under the current scheme, 85 per cent of Cypriots are eligible of free medical treatment at state run hospitals.
Any further government delay to reform healthcare may result into even higher government expenses, especially with the introduction of the European directive “Patient’s rights in cross border healthcare” in less than 30 months, Christofi warned.
“Cypriot patients eligible for free of charge healthcare services at domestic state-run hospitals will turn to other EU countries for treatment, leading to an increase in government healthcare spending,” he said. “This risk is highly probable, since more than half of the 85 per cent of the population entitled today to state-provided healthcare services are obliged to resort to the private sector and pay out of their pocket due to the long waiting lines and other inefficiencies of the public health sector”.
The introduction of the NHS may even give the economy an additional boost which has not been quantified yet, with the elimination of queues and long waiting lists at state hospitals which lead to a waste of productive working hours, according to Christofi.
The government remains unconvinced about the promised benefits of healthcare reform and it has also disputed the findings of the report commissioned by the Health Care Organisation. Finance minister Charilaos Stavrakis instructed a re-evaluation of its findings. “The assumptions of the report are based on older facts,” he told state radio CyBC in early May.Christofi said that the negotiation of every year’s healthcare expenditure in advance will make sure that it will not increase faster than the economy. “The global budgeting system will ensure that NHS spending is in line with GDP growth,” he said.
